Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  “Is that what you will do when you are prime minister, Papa?” asked Amanda. “I know it is what I shall do when I am in Parliament like you.”

  Charles laughed.

  “One day you shall indeed accompany me, Amanda. You shall go with me to London, and for no mere visit of two days such as this, but to take your own place in its society.”

  “Do you really mean it?”

  “Of course. When you are seventeen, we shall present you to all of London society. You and your mother shall accompany me when I go into London, and you shall stay for the entire social season.”

  As he spoke, he glanced toward his wife with fun in his eye. She was shaking her head at the thought of such societal involvement. But Charles continued:—

  “Your coming out, Amanda, will be the talk of the city.”

  “Oh, I can hardly wait!”

  “Indeed. And I shall introduce you to princes and princesses, to M.P.s and lords and ladies. You shall go to parties and wear fancy dresses. There will be music and dancing and balls. You shall become one of them, and along with me, we shall make England and the world a better place. What do you say to that?”

  Charles could not help being caught up in his moment of triumph, and his enthusiasm overflowed with high-spirited prognostications. The predictions he lavished on his daughter were a bit grand, perhaps. But she took in his words as certainties only awaiting time to be fulfilled. In her young ears they were statements of what someday would be fact.

  “Oh yes, Papa! When may I go to a ball and meet a prince?”

  “Charles, you shouldn’t fill her mind with such expectations,” said Jocelyn with a smile. “A young lady’s coming out is one thing—meeting princes is something else. She might just take you seriously.”

  He laughed again. Despite his wife’s protestations, it was music to his ears to hear his daughter speak so, for he eagerly anticipated the day when he could share his active life at the center of English affairs with not only his son but also his daughters. That his wife had not been presented to society with a formal coming out, and would have loathed the very thought of it, did not enter Charles’ mind. Jocelyn had always considered herself extremely fortunate to have been in India at the time of her seventeenth birthday. She had thus been spared both possible humiliations—either the ritual itself, or the knowledge that her mother might have prevented it even if they had been in England.

  Amanda was so young, her parents had never before even spoken of the matter.

  “Of course she will take me seriously,” Charles replied. He turned again to Amanda, and spoke again. “All in good time, my dear,” he said. “Perhaps when you are twelve—no, let me think,” he added, assuming a serious tone, placing his forefinger against his lips for effect, and looking her over approvingly from head to toe, “—I think you may be ready by ten,” he said slowly, emphasizing the word, then nodding thoughtfully. “What do you say to that? Would you like to go with me to a London ball at ten?”

  “Oh, may I, Mother—please!” she exclaimed, beaming under her father’s approbation.

  “We shall see, my dear,” said Jocelyn. “But seventeen is a more traditional age for being presented than ten.”

  “And one day I shall be prime minister too,” Amanda added, including her own prophecy as the finalization of the discussion.

  “Whatever put the idea of being prime minister into your head, dear?” asked her mother.

  “Papa did, Mother.”

  “What—I never hinted at such a thing!” laughed Charles.

  “Papa says he will take me to the city with him to help him change the world,” said Amanda, still addressing her mother.

  “Don’t you know women are not allowed in the House of Commons?” said Jocelyn.

  “If he is in the House of Commons, why should I not be as well?”

  Charles and Jocelyn Rutherford glanced at one another and smiled. Both knew well enough that it would be pointless to argue. Once an idea came into their determined little Amanda’s head, nothing short of the very divine intervention Charles would have scoffed at was capable of removing it.

  “Well, Amanda,” he said after a brief pause, “perhaps you shall be prime minister one day at that.”

  “Do you really think so, Papa?” said Amanda, for she was shrewd enough to have seen the look which passed between her father and mother. “Or are you just teasing me?”

  “Why not?” rejoined Charles, almost as if debating within his own progressive mind the viability of his daughter’s incredible and far-reaching suggestion. “What’s to stop you? Of course, we’ll have to get women the vote first,” he chuckled as an afterthought.

  “Why shouldn’t women vote?” said Amanda, with a little more persistent edge in her tone.

  “I do not say they shouldn’t,” he replied. “But we have to give the rest of the country time to catch up with some of the other reforms we have made. It hasn’t been that long since working men have been able to vote.”

  “I think women ought to be able to vote,” said Amanda, and now the voice of the young politician was resolute, as if her indomitable declaration should make it so.

  “Many women would agree with you, dear,” said Jocelyn, “wouldn’t they, Charles?”

  “Indeed. And a number which is growing daily. But these things take time. For that to happen we first have to get the Liberal party back on top. At the moment the Tories control the government and they are extremely powerful just now.”

  “What are Tories, Papa?”

  “The Conservative party,” he answered. “As long as I am a Liberal, and they are in power, there is very little I can do . . . other than speak out. But if there is anything you can depend on in politics, it is change. Our day will dawn again. The time for such change shall come.”

  A brief silence followed as the train clacked along. Its massive wheels along the iron tracks created the most beautifully clanking rhythmic music in George’s ears.

  “You know,” mused Charles, “I believe someday there shall be a woman prime minister. You mark my words, Jocie,” he said, turning again to his wife, “whether it’s ten years or ten generations from now. England is a land of progressive ideas, and has been ever since Magna Carta was signed.”

  In the seat across from them Amanda’s mother listened but offered no further comment for now. She was proud of Charles. And despite a few lingering anxieties, she was thrilled for the opportunity to meet Queen Victoria. But when the celebration was over, she would be happy to return to Heathersleigh. Even as Charles’ wife, London society was not the life for her. Notwithstanding her husband’s promises about their daughter’s future, it would have suited Jocelyn Rutherford for Amanda to avoid the trappings of society altogether.

  “Our political system is the envy of the world,” Charles was saying. “Certainly women will vote one day. Forces are already gathering in other nations in such directions. Once the presence of women has been established in the Commons, it will only be a matter of time before a woman rises to the top of her party. Perhaps our Amanda is onto something after all.”

  Though in most bloodlines, political legacies were passed down from father to son, in the family Rutherford it was upon young Amanda that the political psyche of her father had already, even at seven, come to rest. He had noted the gleam in her eye as they talked. By his words, even if unconsciously, he had built into her a sense not only of energetic determination, but also invincibility. Whether there ever would be a woman prime minister—who could tell? But if it ever happened, he wouldn’t put it past his energetic and dogged little Amanda to grow up to be the woman who achieved it.

  Of course these controversial views concerning women’s suffrage, not to mention the notion that women might share the hallowed corridors of the Houses of Parliament, were not ones he voiced even amongst his most liberal and farseeing colleagues in the Fabian society. Nor did he pause to reflect upon what the socialist writers who had influenced him would think of his own aristo
cratic blood. It was enough, he thought, if he used his privilege for the betterment of mankind.

  As Amanda sat contemplating what she had heard, and dreaming of what fortunes lay before her in the great city, she was aware of no such reservations on the part of her father. How was she to think of his every word other than a fait accompli of his political program? If her father said that she could change the world with him, she adopted his word as fact. If he said she might become prime minister someday, that too became solidified in her tenacious and visionary brain.

  Amanda had been an astute observer of her father’s rise in prominence, more so than either Charles or Jocelyn realized. Indeed, hadn’t she listened to her father’s views and speeches? She was a young socialist, just like him, with just enough youthful naïveté to accompany her ideals to think that if her father might aspire to the prime ministership, why shouldn’t she? That women did not yet even possess the power to vote represented no obstacle in young Amanda’s mind.

  She was too young to concern herself with practicalities. And as the train carried them along, her father’s words sunk deep into the fabric of her being.

  She would make herself as influential as he . . . perhaps greater.

  14

  Center of Civilization

  If ever a single dot on the globe could claim to be the hub of man’s activity on the earth as the nineteenth century after the birth of Jesus Christ wound to a close, that place was surely the great city to which the Rutherford family was traveling.

  As the train pulled into Paddington Station, their eyes widened and their senses heightened with anticipation. All around them was noise and bustle, and Devon seemed a million miles behind them.

  The family disembarked. Charles arranged for a cab that would hold them all, and they set out for their hotel. The clickety-clack-clack-clack of the sturdy horse’s four shod feet along the cobbled street from the station toward the center of the city continued the mesmerization of George’s brain begun by the train’s wheels and tracks. His sister, however, sat heedless of the occasional snort, the creak and groan of leather, the rubbing of wood and metal, or the faint odor of horseflesh that wafted back into the carriage. Horses were of the country, and everything associated with them was familiar and boring.

  But the city—that was something different. She gazed this way and that, her senses tinging with the electric atmosphere of the huge, sprawling metropolis. From every direction, sights and smells and sounds of the biggest gathering of human beings on earth called out to her in ways her Devonshire home never could. She could scarcely contain the enchantment welling up in her heart as she glanced about in the continuous energy of delight.

  No more exciting place in all the world could possibly exist, she thought, as she bounced gently along at her father’s side in the horse-drawn cab. The city’s very activity stimulated her brain as nothing back on the downs of Devon ever had. Tall buildings loomed above them. Horse-drawn carts of every size and shape imaginable filled the streets. Some, like theirs, bore visitors or residents from one place in the city to another; others transported vegetables or fruit or other produce to market. Still others were filled with boxes and freight of unknown content.

  A few motorcars sped about, whose put-put-puts of white exhaust smoke and oddly tooting horns drew both George’s head and his father’s with more than idle curiosity. Peddlers shouted and called to potential customers concerning a great variety of goods. Many turned toward their carriage as it passed, holding up now a dead chicken by the neck, now a bouquet of roses, now a fresh melon, with a tone that was at once imploring, demanding, and inquiring.

  Dozens of open-air market stalls spread along the sidewalks. Businessmen in suits and carrying leather satchels walked in and out of the tall buildings. Every inch of the place bustled with activity and movement.

  “Do you see that wall there, George?” Charles was saying, pointing out a stone structure to his son. “It is said to be one thousand years old.”

  “A thousand years!”

  “Can you imagine, George?—it was built before the Norman invasion. But there are ruins from Roman times almost twice that age! We shall go across the river tomorrow to the old city and Southwark, and I will show you. It was called Londinium then.”

  As they now came along the street named for their queen, the sight of the magnificent Abbey met their gaze. Even modern, progressive, forward-visioned, spiritually agnostic Charles Rutherford could not but be filled with a sense of awe at its grandeur. Who could not be stirred by memory of the history contained within the walls of the great cathedral?

  “When the Normans conquered England in 1066, George, my boy,” Charles said, “William the Conqueror marched straight up from the south coast to London. He had himself crowned right here in the Abbey.”

  He spoke a few words to the driver of the cab, who, as a result, called out several unintelligible sounds to the horse whose business it was to pull them across town. Whatever language of man or beast they were, the horse apparently understood the meaning well enough and slowed his gait. Charles took the opportunity to point out various elements of the exterior design of the cathedral to George, while Amanda busily watched the people going in and coming out.

  Gradually the pace of the carriage increased again. A minute later they came within sight of the magnificent Palace of Westminster, where the two Houses of Parliament met. It was here that Charles’ duties kept him busy during the parliamentary season.

  “William the Conqueror made Westminster his home and the center of his government,” he said. “Ever since then, this has been the site where kings and queens and parliaments have presided over our nation, though of course the queen now lives at Buckingham Palace.”

  “Is it as old as the Abbey?” asked George, gazing in wonder at the ornate spires and the clock tower at the top of which Big Ben presided regally over the city.

  “No, George. Much of Westminster Palace was destroyed in the fire of 1834. Certain portions of the old eleventh century Hall survived, but most of what you see was built during my father’s time.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful, Papa!” exclaimed Amanda. “Everything is just as you said.”

  “It is indeed a city beyond equal.”

  “Will we really meet the queen?”

  “Indeed, all three of you shall be presented to her,” replied her father. “It will be a moment you will never forget as long as you live.”

  “You must be the most important man in all London!” said Amanda, still gazing up at the brown and gold parliamentary palace.

  Charles laughed.

  “Do you hear that, Jocie?” he said to his wife, still chuckling.

  “I heard,” replied Jocelyn. “But I have always told you that.”

  Again he laughed.

  Amanda hardly heard their banter. She felt more alive and invigorated than ever before in her young life. All the more deeply, as they now passed this nerve center of the nation, did the words her father had spoken on the train penetrate the depths of Amanda Rutherford’s soul.

  She was growing up more rapidly than either father or mother realized. At seven, Amanda yet stood, as it were, on the threshold of seventeen, ready and eagerly awaiting the moment of her own entrance into this bright, gay, exciting, historic world of power and influence.

  Nothing could suit her more than to be the prime minister’s daughter, as she fully believed one day very soon she would be—the belle of every ball, attending the most spectacular events of London’s social season. Then she would take her place, like her father, at the vanguard of England’s progressive political movement.

  ————

  In every era, two seemingly contradictory forces work to move civilization forward. History spawns the times, even as the times give birth to men and women who step forward onto the world stage and exert their influence on the course of events. Does the march of history itself produce the people who are swept up in it? Or do those people dictate which directions the dram
a of man will take?

  The history of this particular land, almost of itself, had given rise to the family who now gazed out the window of their carriage at the sights of London. Charles and Jocelyn Rutherford and their children were people of their times. Yet equally were they the product of the long history of the England they proudly called their own. Their personas, their character, their vision, could no more be separated from this era in which they lived than from the two millennia which had preceded it.

  The carriage now entered Whitehall and made its way along the broad avenue to Trafalgar Square. As they turned onto Haymarket, a building which housed a certain prestigious bank came into view. Charles eyed it with more than casual interest. His wife noted the expression, but said nothing. She did not know exactly what he was thinking at the moment, but she knew well enough who was on his mind.

  Charles’ thoughts quieted. For the next several blocks, despite the noise and hubbub around them, he reflected abstractly on the growth of the great capital and the legacy its magnificent history had left its modern leaders—men like he himself, and even perhaps his cousin in the bank they had just passed. The two had grown up, if not exactly together, at least in proximity to one another, though their courses in life had diverged early. It was men such as they, each in their own way, who would influence the directions this city and this nation would take in a new century.

  If history could produce greatness, so could cities. And none more than this.

  Those who would impact the world, those whose potency and leadership would be felt by their peers, those who would be remembered by their achievements and by the historians of the future—to London they looked to fulfill their dreams. In London dwelt opportunity.

  His little daughter was right. Surely this city was the center of all things.

  “Well, here we are!” announced Charles, as the cab pulled up in front of the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane.